Every Storm
by rugbygal
Summary: This is the updated version of The Other Wayne. After her father's murder, Darcy Wayne is forced to move in with her cousin, Bruce, taking her from the city she loves and her best friends. Months later, the anger still won't subside and Darcy wants revenge, and Bruce is the only one who can stop her.
1. Chapter 1

"Bruce, did you see this?"

Bruce Wayne's head shot up at the sound of Alfred's concerned voice. He took the newspaper that Alfred was holding up to him and read the frontpage.

**SLEEPING WITH THE FISHES: BILLIONAIRE FOUND DEAD IN THE HUDSON**

_On August 9, around 4:30 AM, Michael Wayne was found dead in the Hudson River by two local fisherman..._

Bruce stared at the article for a couple seconds before looking up at Alfred.

"Is this...? Is this...?" He was at a loss of words.

"Yes, I'm afraid so."

Michael Wayne was his late father's brother-calling him his uncle seemed inappropriate since they had never met-and after a falling out, the Wayne brothers parted ways and never spoke again.

He went back to reading the article until he read something that startled him.

"He has a daughter?"

"Oh, yes. Poor girl, her mother died when she was eight."

"What from?"

"Drug overdose."

"So now she's an..."

"An orphan, yes."

* * *

"I'm sooo sorry for your loss, Darcy."

"If there's anything we can do..."

"Everything will be okay, dear."

Darcy Wayne spent the entirety of her father's wake responding to these mind numbing sentiments. Her head was spinning from the moment she arrived at the church and all she wanted was some air. Just a little air... was that too much to ask?

Apparently it was, because whenever she tried to slip away someone always pulled back inside to receive a million more unhelpful condolences from people she didn't even like.

People her father didn't like either, for that matter. They probably didn't even like him, Darcy realized after a while. The realization of this was too much to handle. She blew off Mrs. Montgomery without a moment's hesitation and ran for the nearest door.

She noticed a bit too late that she was in the kitchen. Luckily, no one was paying much attention to her since they were too busy working on the meal for after the funeral.

Or maybe they were just used to people hiding out in the kitchen during funerals.

"Getting a little heavy out there?" a gentle voice asked. She whipped her head around to see a cute brunette boy with a kitchen apron on, holding a giant bag of garbage.

"Yeah," she breathed and held the bridge of her nose. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine a world without any people.

And it was beautiful world.

"It's kind of hard to breath in a stuffy kitchen, dontcha think?" Darcy look at him and he smiled and nudged his head towards the back door. Wordlessly she followed, too drained to make some sort smile at his line.

Outside was a grimy alley for delivery trucks, along with a couple dumpsters. Darcy leaned against the brick building and shut her brain off for a couple minutes, a feat that proved impossible thus far.

"Want one?"

She opened her eyes to see the cute brown haired boy holding her a pack of Marlboros.

She took one without swiftly and held it out for a light.

They stood there for a could minutes without speaking, and listed to the sound of cars honking and screeching to a halt in the constant city traffic. Finally, the boy turned to her while stomping on the butt of his cig.

"I half expected for this to be your first smoke," he confessed with a smile, referring to the way she didn't cough once while she puffed on her cigarette.

"I'm 17 and this is New York, of course I've smoked." He smiled at this and then looked down at the black Converse sneakers peaking out from underneath his dirty old jeans.

"Very true, but what am I supposed to think when good girl, Darcy Wayne shows up in an expensive dress?"

She knew he meant it more tongue and cheek than anything but something about his playful statement bothered her.

Darcy's change in mood was obvious in the way she dropped her cigarette and crushed it aggressively with her heel.

That was her claim to fame in the upper crust of Manhattan and now apparently the rest of the island knew it too. She was always in magazines as "Manhattan's Girl Next Door,"-or something to that effect-which isn't something people at her infamously racy prep school want to be known as. This was in stark contrast to her best friend, Bex McAdams, who was known as the biggest party girl to ever hit the upper east side. Many morning interviews she had to attend for her band were usually spent nursing a hangover.

And on the day of her best friend's father's funeral, she failed to make an appearance. After Darcy called her a couple hours after her dad died, she hadn't heard from her since, and it didn't help that it was probably one of the shortest conversations Darcy had with her best friend ever.

And now she was alone with some random guy who'd probably tell this whole encounter to _People_.

"Look," he began saying, trying to correct his poor choice of words.

"Don't worry about it," she said curtly and side stepped around him. Then she disappeared back into the kitchen, read to jump back into the shark tank.

Later, Darcy was driven back to the Wayne Penthouse where she'd spend her last night in the place where she grew up.

She shook off her heels and let them clank onto the hardwood floor that ran throughout the apartment. It had been a long tiring day that was filled with pent up anger and a strong craving for a scotch. She went to her dad's office and opened the liquor cabinet where her dad supplied something to suit everyone's preferred drink. Darcy never drank very much but when she did, it was because she was angry at her father, which was the exact case now.

Darcy slugged down her scotch in no time and poured herself another. She was angry, very angry. She was angry at her father for leaving her, for leaving her all alone and so soon. She was even more angry that even when he was alive she was alone. And that he got in too deep with the sharks down in Hell's Kitchen, which ended up leaving him at the bottom of the Hudson...

She, at that last thought, commanded herself to stop thinking. With a shaking hand she downed her fourth drink and then pulled out the Captain Morgan.

Then the phone rang. She took a swig out to the bottle and clumsily shuffled away from the cabinet.

"Ah... _hullo_?"

"Hello, is Miss Wayne available?"

"Yeah it's me... I mean, uh-" she tried to remember her manners.

"Miss McAdams is here to see you, would you like me to send her away-?"

"No, no, it's fine. Send her up," Darcy sighed. Her loneliness outweighed her anger.

She hung up and then took another long drink of her liquor and tried not to let the guilt get to her. She was allowed one night to go crazy, right?

Which was what Bex was most certainly going to propose. If Bex McAdams ever showed up at Darcy's door after ten, it was because she want to go partying.

Darcy stumbled to the door to answer the familiar tap of Bex's dainty hand.

"Hey, Darc. Whoa, looks like you started having fun without me." Her friend nodded to the bottle in her hand that she forgot to put down making Darcy blush madly.

"Oh, I-"

"Don't worry about it, kid. Now, let's get your party clothes on." She darted past her, sashaying her hips in preparation for the nightclub that awaited them. Bex led the way to Darcy's massive bedroom, where she pushed through the mess Darcy made when she lost her wits upon hearing of her father's murder.

"How much is that window going to cost?" Bex asked, nodding to the broken bay window that was temporarily fixed with duct tape and saran wrap.

"The building guy said not to worry about it," she answered in a monotone, which was what her voice began sounding like as the funeral progressed, because there are few things more depressing than sitting alone in the front pew at their father's funeral.

They went into the closet where Darcy waited on the long sofa while Bex rummaged through the clothes in the "party" section of her closet. This was a usual occurrence when Darcy and Bex were going out.

"Here," Bex said and tossed her a piece of clothing, as if disgusted and then rummaged to find something for herself.

She looked at the outfit and put it on without protest. She looked at herself in the mirror and groaned.

It wasn't bad, but... _meh_

"C'mon, it's been awhile since you've been shopping. It's the best I could do... Wait a minute. Darcy, you vixen! What is this?" Bex pulled out a skimpy black dress from the back of the closet. "And I thought I knew all your dirty little secrets!" Darcy blushed madly and tried to snatch it from Bex.  
She bought it on the spur of the moment back when she was seeing some guy from St. Bart's, where it was common knowledge that they were the wildest of all the private school boys in the city. But she ended up being too afraid to wear it, but it didn't matter because she saw him with Beckie Schumacher, who had the biggest rack at her school, so Darcy didn't really care anyways. There was no competition between the bodacious blonde and the plain-jane brunette.

"You _have_ to wear it!" Bex shouted and practically pulled off her old outfit herself before Darcy pushed her away and grabbed the dress from her best friend's hands.

"Fine, fine, chill out, will ya'?" Darcy put it on and looked in the mirror.

It was tight and had large slits on the sides. It reached her mid thigh, making her acutely aware of her toned legs.

"Ow, ow!" Bex hooted at the sight of her best friend, who usually had on clothes that didn't give her gymnast body enough credit.

"Oh, stop," Darcy blushed and tried to shove her dress down as much as possible without making her boobs fall out on top. Bex just laughed and grabbed a matching pair of black heels and handed it to her friend as she walked past her to the door.

"Okay, so first we'll probably go out to Valentino's downtown, then we'll head over to Aaron's party after and then maybe to Karlee's if it hasn't been crashed by the police yet. You game, Darc?"

Bex gripped the handle of the door and waited for Darcy to make the final decision.

"Oh, I am so game," Darcy breathed before downing a gulp of the Captain Morgan bottle from earlier.

And that was the last thing she remembered.


	2. Chapter 2

The social services office was the last place on Earth Darcy wanted to be. She slumped far down in her seat and picked at the fraying ends of her 'The Ramones' shirt.

A couple days ago she decided that she was done with being "Plain Jane" Darcy. So, today, she was wearing worn out jeans she found stuffed away in her dresser, an old t-shirt that she had no idea where it came from, and her old black Converse sneakers from middle school that still amazingly fit. Her makeup was also a bit darker than usual and her nails were painted black. After a lifetime of cardigans and Mary Janes, she was pretty damn ready for a change.

Of course, one would argue that she made one hell of a change the night of her father's funeral.

It had been a week since she went out drinking with Bex and she still couldn't remember what had happened. All of sudden she woke up in a the basement of a nightclub, covered in her own vomit and suffering from a massive hangover and multiple bruising to her arms and legs.

Lucky for her, the tabloids seemed to be able to clue her in. A girl who reported to have watched her fall down a flight of steps helped explain the bruising. A couple of junkies also swore they smoked weed with her and a guy claimed to have made out with her in the corner of a club. Darcy wasn't sure what to believe but it seemed as if she partied with every young adult in the city.

Back in the social worker's office, the door opened and Mr. John Kanes walked in.

"Hello, Miss Wayne," he said in such a way that suggested he'd rather be waxing his back hair than be in the same room as her.

And Darcy couldn't blame him, because she felt the same way. This wasn't the first time she had encountered her uptight social worker, and she was dreadfully aware it wouldn't be the last. Prior to this he would come by for expected, unexpected visits when rumors would begin to flare about the dangerous activity her father was involved in. Of course, they couldn't do anything about it because Michael Wayne was too powerful for a lowly social worker to take down. However, John Kanes would claim to be checking up on how she was handling her mother's death, which apparently required years of check ups.

Okay, for some people it did... or most people.

But Darcy knew he was lying because the conversations they had always led back to her father's line of work and if the rumors were true. And Darcy always said what she was conditioned to repeat.

"My father is an honest man who is the part-owner and chairman of the board at Wayne and Grimm International Bank. These rumors are petty and stupid and I suggest you stop listening to them." She'd recite at every meeting, even though it was painfully obvious that this was far from the the truth.

Back in the office that felt more like an interrogation room, John Kanes took a seat at his desk and began rifling through a stack of papers.

"So, Miss Wayne," he began, "I see you've acquired a change in attire recently," he noted in a dull voice.

"Are you profiling me, John?" she asked dryly, despite the seething anger inside.

"Oh no, Miss Wayne, I would never do that. I'm just making an observation, that's all."

"Well why don't we stop discussing the insignificant details of my wardrobe choices and get down to the task at hand?" John looked up at her and gave her a small smirk.

"Of course, let's begin then." He pulled out four papers from the stack and put the rest away.

"Now, what do you know about your father's death and what have you told the police?"

"I told the police exactly what I know, which is nothing."

"Darcy-"

"You should have saved your breath and just looked at the police report-"

"Oh yeah? Well, the police report also stated that 'the daughter of the victim is said to know more than she claims.'"

"They wouldn't put that in a police report!"

"No, they wouldn't, but that's what every cop at NYPD has said to me! And you can't keep hiding things from the people who are trying to help you!" He was standing up now with his hands on his desk. This was the angriest she had ever seen John, although it wasn't the first time he raised his voice at her either.

"Rumors, Mr. Kanes, all rumors," she stated slowly and harshly. "You of all people should know that-on account of the rumors of you and Mrs. Murphy going around..."

Mrs. Murphy was his boss's wife that he allegedly had an affair with.

"My social life is none of your business!"

"Um, excuse me? Is this Mr. John Kanes's office?"

A british accent made Darcy and her social worker stop in their tracks whirl around to see an older man with gray hair peeking his head into the room.

"Ah-hum, yes this is," Holmes said, trying to regain his composure. "Please take a seat, Mr. Pennyworth, I assume?"

"Yes, thank you." He smiled at both of them and took a seat in the chair next to Darcy. She stared at John and gave him a look that had 'care to explain?' written all over it.

"Darcy, this is Mr. Alfred Pennyworth, he is representing your cousin, Bruce Wayne, for our meeting today."

"Wait, wait, wait," Darcy sputtered, looking between Alfred and John, "what does any of this have to do with Bruce?"

She never met her older cousin, Bruce, who now was her only living relative. Her father didn't like to talk about anything having to do with his brother, whom he severed all ties with after they had a falling out many years ago. Darcy didn't really know anything about it other than the fact that it had to do with her father turning to more shady means of earning money and Bruce's father having no problem voicing his opinion on the matter.

Alfred and John shared a concerned glance before Mr. Kanes cleared his throat.

"Well, um, Darcy, this is why I called this meeting in the first place. I wanted to discuss with you your living arrangements-"

"Yeah, I'm living with my friend, Bex," Darcy cut him off, not liking at all where this conversation was headed.

The day after the funeral she went to live with Bex, which was proving to be very difficult once she realized that the rumors of her friend taking home a different guy almost every night were all true. However, it was better than staying at a foster home while in limbo, she reasoned. So she packed up her things in the back of Bex's convertible the morning her social worker was supposed to pick her up and took off with only a message left with the man at the front desk:

_John,_

_Don't freak-with Bex._

_I am NOT going to a foster home. No way! You're crazy if you think I'm going._  
_I'll be fine with Bex and she said I can stay there 'till I'm 18-or until whenever really._  
_You can reach me on my cell, if you must._  
_-Darcy_

"Now, Darcy," John said slowly, "you know that, that isn't a suitable place for you to live."

_Well, duh_, she thought, _it's Bex._ Her best friend was eighteen, meaning she was on her own and lived in a party house all to herself and whatever guy she brought home that night. And Darcy soon learned it was never empty. There was always people coming and going-people she had never met before or seen in her life, and most of them Bex probably didn't know either. The whole house reeked of booze, cigarettes, and pot. There were probably even more drugs being abused in that town house but that was something Darcy didn't want to know.

Not wanting to admit John was right, she remained quiet, which said more than actually agreeing with him.

"Anyways," he continued, "Mr. Wayne and I have discussed what your options are, and we came to the conclusion that you would be required to live with Bruce until you are eighteen."

"And I don't get any say in the matter?"

"No," John said firmly, so she wouldn't start talking her way out of it. "Now," he said, turning towards the man next to her, "Alfred is here in case you have any question for him or Mr. Wayne about your situation."

Alfred smiled at her warmly, making her feel a little less defensive.

"Why couldn't Bruce be here?" she asked rudely, making John shoot her a warning glance.

"He has an important meeting he couldn't get out of. He told me to tell you that he's sorry he couldn't make it."

"Would I be able to come back to the city and visit my friends?"

John stepped in on this one.

"If we feel that you are stable and responsible enough to handle it," he said, referring to the bender she went on after her father's funeral, "then you can visit for a weekend." She nodded, satisfied with the answer. "But," he quickly added, "you can't go every weekend. It's important for you to build friendships in Gotham as well." Darcy smirked a bit at this but nodded.

_Yeah, like that's going to happen_, she thought cynically.

* * *

"So, you're, like, definitely going to live with your hot cousin?"

"Would you please stop referring to my cousin as hot? And yes, I am going to be living with him."

Darcy was packing up her things while Bex looked on from the doorway of her friend's short-lived bedroom.

"C'mon, Darc, you have to admit that your cousin is really attractive."

"Um, no... that's weird," she replied while rolling her eyes.

Darcy would be lying if she said she wasn't relieved to be moving out of Bex's house. She lived there two extra days after her meeting with John and Alfred. Two days too many, if you asked her. This became apparent when she got home and found some random girl searching through her things. This led to Darcy completely losing it and grabbing the girl by her hair and practically dragging her out of the townhouse and leaving her on the sidewalk. Then after a half hour of her and her best friend fighting over the state of her house, Darcy left and wandered the city and eventually found a friend from school who let her crash at her home for the night. It was only thirty minutes before Darcy had this conversation with Bex that she returned home for the first time since their fight.

"Are you going to come back?" Bex finally asked after a long silence. Darcy stopped and surprised herself by having to think about it.

"Maybe," she decided to answer honestly, because she realized that there wasn't really anything the city had to offer her. Of course, she loved New York City, but now that she thought about it, she realized that she wasn't as close to Bex as she thought, and over the years they had become so different, and they were just too scared to admit that they weren't really best friends.

And not to mention that she didn't really have any other friends. There were some girls she talked to at school, and some of the girls on her gymnastics team, but they weren't the type that she would have a lifelong friendship with.

Bex didn't say anything after she heard Darcy's answer but just turned and walked right out of the room. She sighed and kept on packing, and tried to not let it get to her.

An hour later she was all packed up and waited for Alfred to pick her up. She sat in the entryway and tried to ignore the snickers from the random people that were hanging out in the kitchen.

A little while later, Bex came downstairs and stood in front of Darcy with her hands on her hips.

"Look, I'm really sorry."

"You don't have to do this, Bex-"

"No, I want to." They stared at each other for a while before Darcy stood up and gave her old best friend a hug.

Then, Alfred's car pulled up and Darcy had to let go.


End file.
